- Boston Globe:
'Housing first,' a radical new approach to ending chronic homelessness, is gaining ground in Boston
In the past, society's approach to homeless people with chronic health problems such as addiction has been governed by tough love: Stay in treatment, or you don't get the opportunity for publicly supported housing. People who could not confront their addiction, the thinking went, could not handle an apartment.But a new approach, called "housing first," is gathering momentum. The idea is to target the most difficult cases -- the chronically homeless who make up between 10 and 20 percent of the homeless population and spend years cycling between the streets, shelters, jail cells, and emergency rooms -- and give them apartments without requiring them to get sober, in the hope that having a place to live will help them address their other problems.
More than 150 cities or counties around the country already have programs of some kind or plans to initiate one, and last month the Massachusetts Senate Ways and Means Committee recommended doubling the size of a small pilot program in the state. If the pilot succeeds, proponents say it could force dramatic changes in homeless policy -- and a recognition that the current shelter system, built on what they call a punitive moralism, has fundamentally failed.
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